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Friday, May 25, 2012

Building Tesla (Photo Gallery)

Tesla Motors will deliver its first batch of Model S sedans this July. Here, one is guided past a series of robotic spray-paint guns. Photographs by John Stocklin

Building Tesla -- Technology Review

At its electric-car factory in Silicon Valley, Tesla obsesses over details like making its own high-tech tools.

Just as Tesla’s cars don’t feel like anything from Detroit, the ­California factory that produces the company’s upcoming Model S electric sedan is inspired as much by Tesla’s high-tech neighbors in Silicon Valley as by a typical auto plant. In particular, Tesla is obsessive about taking care of details itself—whether it’s forming the cars’ bodies from scratch or making tools for the robots that build the vehicles.